Planning a Social Media Strategy

01/07/2019

Whenever we ask questions about social media strategy, we come across so many companies and businesses who tell us that they either do not have one in place, or their strategy consists of merely boosting the additional post here and there, or that they 'do what they've always done'.

Are you one of these companies too? Then this post is right for you. One of the beauties, and at the same time challenges, of social media is that it is constantly changing. As a result, us business owners, need to stay on top of what is happening and which direction the market is going towards. That way we ensure that we do not end up spending hundreds or thousands of Euro on a social media campaign that has no strategy, and therefore, no results.

Here are some interesting stats which will help any Marketer or Marketing Department or Business Owner to plan their social media strategy more intelligently.

61% of consumers are more likely to research a product recommended by a friend on social media. This means that you need to get working on those reviews and recommendations! Depending on the nature of your business you might even want to consider an influencer or brand ambassador, however, based on recent industry studies it seems to be that clients value the opinion of people they know much more than that of people that they do not know. You have probably noticed that Facebook now has the feature of the Facebook shop, which enables brands to sell their products via this platform too. This, as well as the ability to tag products on Facebook itself and also on Instagram have made it easier for users to buy what they see, as soon as they see it. In fact, 49% of consumers are now buying their products through social media. This also reinforces that fact that it is not only important for businesses to have social media pages and accounts....but also to maintain them and keep them up to date.

Social Media influencers or brand ambassadors are still very popular among Generation Z users (those users born between the mid-1990s and early 2000's). In fact, 45% of these teens / young adults follow 10+ influencers on their personal social media accounts. This means that if your target audience are these users, you might want to consider hiring an influencer or brand ambassador and to sponsor such posts as this helps to increase brand awareness, engagement and conversion.

63% of the big companies globally are now on Instagram. This is a 10% increase over last year i.e. use of this platform is increasing significantly. Instagram focuses entirely on images, so forget clickable links and long posts. You simply need this as part of your social media strategy to bring people to your profile and encourage them to click through to your site via the link in your company's bio. Video content also generates a lot of engagement on Instagram, and so do Insta Stories.

Not everyone is on Facebook. In fact, internationally, around 45% of Facebook users aged between 18 and 29 take very long breaks from this platform, sometimes failing to log in for over a year. What does this mean? Very simply, this means that you need to stop investing so much in sponsored ads on Facebook and focus more on clarifying who your buyer persona is and what their social media behaviour is like. That way you can rest assured that the social media investment that you are making, is not falling on deaf ears (or closed accounts).

These statistics go to show how important it is to plan your social media marketing strategy intelligently in order to have relevant and effective results.